To be hinest with you I don’t think blocking access to (for example) Facebook and providing an indigenous alternative to it amounts to restriction in an ethically sensible way. I was going to write a longer reply but I am a bit drunk so I’ll refrain. Let me know what you think about so I can try to explain myself a bit better.
what I meant is that, instead of making access to facebook or twitter harder, educate people and explain to them why these platforms are bad. let people know that GAFAM are basically doing NSA’s work at this point, that they have started to centralize internet and take away people’s freedom, that these platforms see the user as nothing more than an ad-watching animal that has to become addicted to scrolling, stuff like that. if it happens, then people would see these platforms for what they are, and won’t be interested in joining them. this will benefit everyone, people can’t say China is censoring the internet or oppressing its people, Chinses people have a better digital literacy, etc.
the other problem is how the restrictions are applied. for example why is lemmygrad blocked by the firewall? it’s platform made by communists for communists, so I don’t see the ponit in banning it.
the third problem I would say is the Chinese alternatives themselves. I don’t see wechat or tiktok (apparently it has a different version in China) as better alternatives. they still have many features that are undesirable, they’re centralized, privacy-invasive, proprietary, addictive and profit driven, in other words, they become the very thing they swore to destroy.
To be hinest with you I don’t think blocking access to (for example) Facebook and providing an indigenous alternative to it amounts to restriction in an ethically sensible way. I was going to write a longer reply but I am a bit drunk so I’ll refrain. Let me know what you think about so I can try to explain myself a bit better.
what I meant is that, instead of making access to facebook or twitter harder, educate people and explain to them why these platforms are bad. let people know that GAFAM are basically doing NSA’s work at this point, that they have started to centralize internet and take away people’s freedom, that these platforms see the user as nothing more than an ad-watching animal that has to become addicted to scrolling, stuff like that. if it happens, then people would see these platforms for what they are, and won’t be interested in joining them. this will benefit everyone, people can’t say China is censoring the internet or oppressing its people, Chinses people have a better digital literacy, etc.
the other problem is how the restrictions are applied. for example why is lemmygrad blocked by the firewall? it’s platform made by communists for communists, so I don’t see the ponit in banning it.
the third problem I would say is the Chinese alternatives themselves. I don’t see wechat or tiktok (apparently it has a different version in China) as better alternatives. they still have many features that are undesirable, they’re centralized, privacy-invasive, proprietary, addictive and profit driven, in other words, they become the very thing they swore to destroy.